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How To Select Products For Dropshipping eCommerce Business

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Dropshipping eCommerce business is a fantastic business to be in as it’s lucrative and hassle free. The beauty of starting eCommerce business with drop shipping is that the eCommerce merchant can sell the products without owning them, i.e., when the customers buy the product online, the company that owns the merchandise will ship the product directly to the customer. Awesome, isn’t it? So if you are aspiring for a successful business, this is it. Start your own dropshipping eCommerce website and know how to make money by dropshipping. But to start the business, you need to decide on the product that you are going to sell.

Start eCommerce Dropship Website

Market demand:

For selecting the product, the first thing you need to do is measure the market demand and figure out the supply side. Unless there’s a demand for the product, you can’t supply it and become profitable. You will get a fair idea of market demand through the following sources:

  • eBay and Amazon categories: To know which products are the most popular ones in the market, check out eBay and Amazon categories. Although it has hundreds of categories, the most viewed categories are at the very top, indicating their popularity.
  • Compete.com: This source will offer you tons of information about any website that you want. The offered information includes traffic, most viewed items, location of advertisements and what not. However, this paid service is bit on the steep side.
  • Google trends: With this service you can find all the information about a particular part, i.e., demographics, search volume and seasonality of the product.
  • Watchcount.com: Designed for eBay, this free service will help you gather data about how many watchers are viewing a particular product and which products are selling like hot cakes.

Analyze your niche:

Once you have decided on the product, you need to analyze its current market and feasibility of initiating its business. For analyzing the niche, consider the following factors.

  • Selling price: The selling price is quite important. Cheaper the products, easier to sell. The perfect price range of selling the products is $100-$200. Also, when you are selling inexpensive products, you will get less emails and phone calls. So consider these while deciding on the price range.
  • Market size: It becomes easier to sell products when the market size is big. If the market size is small, you will have problems converting visitors into paying customers.
  • Market age: Make sure that your target audience is neither below 18 or seniors requiring care givers. They should be savvy enough to be independent online shoppers.
  • Product rarity: How widely available the product that you are trying to sell is? If it’s easily available, why would anyone approach you? Wouldn’t they just go to the local store and buy it from there?
  • Product obsolescence: Selling a product that won’t go out of fashion or become obsolete is a smart decision. When the product is there to stay, it becomes easy to build a website around it. However, this is not possible for the products that go out of fashion after few months.
  • Product seasonability: If your product is seasonal, understand it clearly that you will be able to sell it only during seasons and not throughout the year.
  • Product size and weight: Picking a product that costs a small fortune to ship is a bad decision. Pick a product which doesn’t weigh much and shipping will be a breeze.
  • Profit: Ideally, you want to shoot for the profit of 75% to 100%. This way, even after paying for all the overheads, you will end up with decent amount of profit.

Do you need help to start ecommerce dropship website? Ydeveloper is there for you. Our business consultants will help you analyze your business prospects and set up eCommerce website that’s painless yet beneficial.

6 eCommerce Situations to Avoid If you Want More Sales

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How many times has it occurred to you that you open an ecommerce webstore and close it instantly as the design doesn’t click with you or you find it too intricate to navigate? Do you want your visitors to go through the same practice? Of course not because finally it will cost you sales.

Just go through the next six eCommerce mistakes to know how you can avoid such circumstances and rise ecommerce sales:

Improve eCommerce Site to Increase Sales

Invisible search box:

Search functionality is very important as it helps visitors find the exact product they are looking for. If your search box is user-friendly but not visible to the visitors right away, little good it will do. Make sure that the search box is visible on each of the pages, including inquiry form.

Complicated filters (Faceted Navigation):

Along with the search functionality comes various filters such as new products, low priced products, different brands and so on. If you wish to offer outstanding user experience, you need to offer simple yet intuitive search functionality and easy-to-use filters is one such feature. Make sure that the search filters are simple yet effective; they should aid in navigation not hamper the process.

Out of stock:

Although it’s great to have out-of-stock sticker for the products you don’t have on hand, little does it do in way of customer satisfaction. Of course you can’t help it when you don’t have the product on hand but you can definitely add “Notify me when the item is in stock,” which will definitely go a long way in soothing your disappointed visitors.

Low-quality images:

Low-quality images are sacrilege when it comes to eCommerce business. It’s only through the product images customers can make an informed buying decision. For higher sales, you have to make sure that the images are of high quality. Also, don’t just upload a single image for a product; upload multiple shots from all possible angles to offer better information to the visitors.

Inadequate product overview:

Visitors love quick product overview feature because it offers them a chance to scan the catalog quickly. It also makes the browsing process easy for them because they don’t need to leave the category or search results’ page. If you aren’t offering product overview or are offering inadequate product overview, it could be one of the major reasons of low sales numbers. So tighten up your belt there.

Hidden shopping cart:

There are two main types of shopping carts – one that appears every time an item is added, and second which only notifies whenever an item is added. If you are using the latter, you need to change it pronto. A customer should always known what he/she has purchased until then – unless you want rising cart abandonment ratio.

Use Ydeveloper’s Custom eCommerce Platform, it is fully customized and ensure you the best quality. Do you know any other reasons for low sales numbers? Comment here to share it with us. Now.

5 Marketing Ideas to Grow your eCommerce Business

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Of course every eCommerce merchant craves growth, but that’s easier said than done. While trying to expand business operations, you as an eCommerce merchant have to think about 10 things, including the impact on cash flow, your customers’ buying power, overhead expenses and more. Although there’s no set strategy that can help you expand your business overnight, we can offer you tips that are guaranteed to make positive difference to your sales and bottom line. Are you wondering what those tips are? Read on to find out.

How To Grow eCommerce Business

Know your customers: As a retailer, you should know your customers. Of course we aren’t talking about their prejudices or career ambitions; what we mean is you have to know their buying preferences and patterns. Once you understand your customers, you will know what’s their shopping behavior and what they expect from you. Accordingly, you can offer them tailor-made services.

Choose products prudently: You should always choose products that your customers are likely to buy. Based on your customers’ preferences, you should make buying decisions. Also, if you are selling special products for holiday season, do remember that you will be competing against big brands. So you need to calculate your margins properly. If you don’t have enough buying power to give big names a run for their money, better go for niche products that are difficult to find at big box retailers.

Content marketing: While you are creating content marketing strategy, you have to take into consideration new customers as well as existing customers. Attracting new customers through unique content is well and good, but you also need to come up with engaging and appealing content for your existing customers because they are your real profit boosters.

Email marketing: Email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools. According to consultant Francisco Rosales, 95% of online shoppers use email and 91% of them check their emails regularly. Another survey found out that 60% of the marketers experienced a positive return on their investment from their email marketing strategy. On an average, a single dollar spent on automated email marketing services produces $44.25 in return.

Social media: Social media is a new form of marketing. Apart from being low cost, social media will help you engage with your audience. This in turn will help you offer them an outstanding social network shopping experience.

There are still many other ways to grow your business. Hire Ydeveloper’s eCommerce Marketing manager for your business to expand online.

If you have any new ideas for expanding business, do share it with us here.

Why Small Business Fail to Make a Cut in The eCommerce World

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Customer is the king. Though it may seem the most clichéd line of the century, it still holds too much weight in the eCommerce space. However, most small businesses take client’s perspective with a grain of salt. Consequently, their eCommerce business suffers. If small business really want to make a cut in the eCommerce space then they should really consider other successful eTailers who are good at attracting customers in big numbers. Figure out whether your small business is making any of these big eCommerce mistakes.

Why Small Business Fail to Make a Cut in The eCommerce World

1. Not informing customers about your store’s uniqueness:

The most common mistake small eCommerce businesses make is that they fail to state a clear value proposition. Small wonder they get lost in a sea of eCommerce sites. There are more than 200,000 eCommerce sites in the United States alone. Powerful ecommerce store development and customization should give customers a reason to shop on your online store.

Find out what makes you stand apart from your competition:

  • Is it your superior product selection?
  • Is it your customer service?
  • Is it your economical prices?
  • Is it your loyalty or reward program?

Zero down on the one that makes your eCommerce store tick, and then play it up with eye-catching headlines and short copies throughout your site.

2. Displaying Low Quality Product Images:

In the online world, images do the selling. As the customers cannot touch and feel the product, the quality of the images should be powerful enough to impress the customers. Moreover, it should have the flexibility to enlarge the image as well, as you can view it from multiple angles.
Plus, your product description should contain all the information that a customer is looking forward to such as:

  • Dimensions
  • Materials
  • Available colors and sizes
  • Anything unique or beneficial

3. Not giving due weightage to Customer Trust:

Everyone knows and trusts eCommerce giant Amazon. Why? Because it offers a secure payment gateway. But small business owners have to do a lot more to attract customers. For instance, for their secure payment gateways they need to show authentication logos and other credentials, as shoppers keep looking for signs to ensure that they are entering a secure payment. So small businesses should include a padlock icon and https URL prefix, and recognizable authentication logos from a trusted SSL certificate authentication provider like VeriSign, Comodo, or Godaddy.

In case your site isn’t verified by a trusted authentication source, customers may not entrust their credit card or bank account details to you.
Other factors that help build consumer trust include modern, clean design and a customer review system that helps shoppers read and leave reviews of products and services.

4. Ignoring Checkout Process

You may have come up with a great site, but if your checkout process is confusing and complex, all the product listing, compelling descriptions and advanced security measures won’t be enough to attract customers.

So, ensure that your checkout solution is streamlined and simple for customers like Amazon did it for its customers. The retail giant’s one-click ordering system makes it easy to buy and encourages repeat business.

Plus, make shipping rates and policies easy and clear, and also have proper return policies and customer service contact information for all channels possible – phone, email, or even instant chat.

By executing these best practices your small business can achieve big gains in eCommerce.

Google Analytics Unveils “Enhanced eCommerce” Feature

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To help eCommerce retailers better, Google Analytics has a brand new feature called “Enhanced eCommerce”. The new feature, which will offer deeper insights into visitors’ behavior, will offer new data about customer behavior as well as a method to measure the effectiveness of eCommerce merchandising activities. Some of the new functionality of the new feature are as follows: Google Analytics Unveils Enhanced eCommerce Feature

  • A new range of funnel-based reports that will help you consider the products that sell well and the ones that are abandoned frequently
  • The section of the website where most shoppers drop off in your shopping funnel
  • Ability to create data-rich user segments that help you dig deeper into your customers shopping experience
  • In-depth insights into on-site promotions
  • Ability to create customized product lists and product landing pages to help you measure user engagement

Customizable funnels:

Through customized funnels, you stand a better chance to find out problem areas of your website. When you cross-reference new customized funnels with traditional Google Analytics, you will get to know if visitors drop off before registering and if customers from different regions react different when browsing through your eCommerce store.

Granular product ID dimension:

Shopping Behavior Analysis in Google Analytics
Shopping Behavior Analysis in Google Analytics

Through Enhanced eCommerce, you will gain access to data-driven, actionable reports. You will be able to see how many visitors viewed specific products, how many of them added/removed a product from their shopping cart and so on. You can also track conversions at the product level, average order value, and refund actions. Some of the advanced reports include:

  • Shopping behavior reports, which will help you evaluate the performance of entire purchase funnel
  • Checkout behavior report, which will help you identify the paths that your visitors take through the checkout process
  • Product performance report, which offers granular look at individual products and their performance in sales funnel
  • Product list performance report, which enables you to measure the sales impact of grouping products together using dimensions such as product list position and product list name
  • Coupon and affiliate marketing report, which enables you to track transactions that include coupons and conversions from affiliate marketing

You can share your feedback for this new Google Analytics feature.